According to retail data, 35% of Marvel’s Wolverine sales were physical discs. This comes from Ampere Analysis (via The Game Business), which tracks sales data across major markets globally.
The data suggests Wolverine shifted 2.16 million units in September (it went on sale September 15), and a significant portion of those sales were on-disc. In Europe, 51% of Wolverine sales came from the boxed version. Zooming in, more than two thirds were physical sales in France, but two thirds were digital in the UK.
It’s not a bet at all. Sony already has hard numbers on gamers with mixed physical and digital libraries, how many people are using discs to watch movies, etc.
The vast majority of customers have heard zero of this news and aren’t principled in their purchases or easily compromise on them, so it’s safe enough to assume that anyone who primarily buys physical games but has bought digital before will still fully transition over out of necessity.
Only Sony knows these numbers, but whatever they are, they’re one-sided enough that Sony is already killing off ways for them to backtrack, and Xbox isn’t far behind.